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If you want the secret, maybe it was the shoes. Officer Patrick McDonald does not wear your grandfather's thick-soled leather police shoes. He wears jet black, uniform-matching, department-approved black Under Armour sneakers, which allow him to be nimble in any number of split-second on-the-job situations.
Let's say, for instance, he was playing wide receiver in a game…

Four local police departments, in the town and village of Hamburg, the city of Tonawanda and the town of Evans, will receive state grants totaling more than $60,000 to enhance their law enforcement efforts.
The town of Hamburg will use its funding to purchase a new patrol vehicle, said Chief Gregory Wickett. The City of Tonawanda intends to use its funding for new radio…

A man who is apparently vision-impaired sustained head and back injuries when he fell into a sinkhole along a street on Buffalo’s lower West Side late Tuesday afternoon, Buffalo police reported.
The man, who remained conscious, was rescued by police and firefighters who arrived at the scene on Georgia Street near Prospect Avenue shortly after 5 p.m.
Identified by aut…

City of Tonawanda Police Detective Joseph Scarpena has been a cop for 30 years. You might think he has seen it all. But he said he hasn't seen anything like this.
For the past five weeks, the entire 28-member police force has been given permission to break a department requirement that officers be clean-shaven.
The cops are going hairy for a cause.
They're ra…

Family, friends and fellow officers welcomed two new police officers to the City of Tonawanda Police Department with swearing in ceremonies and a reception at City Hall on Wednesday.
Officers Adam J. Cruz and Kyle J. Gallivan will start at the Central Police Academy at Erie County Community College's north campus on Monday.
Both new officers grew up in the City of To…

There are a number of things that the state Department of Environmental Conservation doesn’t have a taste for, and one of them is poached salmon.
Three men accused of snagging 69 salmon with an illegal hook and a net at night learned that the hard way after one of them tried to elude authorities by swimming across a creek while another led police on a wild chase in the …

The 25-year-old man killed Saturday on Sherman Street has been identified by police Curtis Byers of Buffalo.
Byers was shot several times around 2:30 a.m. in the 200 block of Sherman Street. He died at the scene, Buffalo police said.
Saturday’s killing was the second homicide this year on Sherman Street and Byers was among at least eight other people who have been shot t…

Buffalo police have identified the man fatally shot Sunday morning as 32-year-old Nigel Fisher.
Police said Fisher was killed in a shooting that happened at about 6:30 a.m. on the 300 block of Norfolk Avenue, near Bailey and East Delavan avenues. Fisher died at the scene, police said.
Fisher is Buffalo's 38th homicide victim of the year.
Anyone who may have informatio…

Buffalo police are offering a reward in a 2013 killing in Riverside, the department announced Tuesday.
John Stein, 19, was fatally shot Dec. 13, 2013, in the vicinity of 37 Humphrey Road, just behind Riverside High School.
"The [Buffalo Police Department] knows that there are individuals who have knowledge about this case, and on behalf of the victim and the victim's fam…

Eric Jones’ trial on drug possession and narcotics sales was supposed to start Monday morning in State Supreme Court in Buffalo.
By late morning, jurors were being sent home and the trial was canceled.
That’s because Jones was fatally shot Sunday night on the city’s West Side, hours before opening statements were slated to be delivered.
Jones, 35, was shot while he was …

Homicides are up 68 percent in Buffalo over the first eight months of the year, and police have solved just three of the 32 killings, according statistics on the Buffalo Police Department’s website.
Seven people were shot to death in August, making it the deadliest month of the year so far.
The police department’s website lists only three of this year’s homicides as “cle…

A violent weekend in Buffalo continued into Monday.
A 24-year-old man who was shot late Monday afternoon on the city's West Side became Buffalo's 30th homicide of 2016. It also was the third homicide in three days.
On Saturday, a 25-year-old woman was fatally shot on Shumway Street. On Sunday, 39-year-old Earl Parker was killed in a double shooting on Schreck Avenue.
Mo…